Shiva
by LibKat
Summary: The last stage is acceptance. Spoilers for 3.10 The Climb and for future episodes based on trailers and published episode descriptions. Also published on AO3.


Author's note: I am not Jewish, so my information about Jewish traditions all comes from the web. Please if I have gotten anything wrong, let me know and I will try to correct it.

Disclaimer: Arrow and its characters belong to a bunch of people who aren't me. I will return them undamaged to DC Entertainment, etc. when I am finished playing with them.

Shiva

Only two lights glowed in the Arrow cave, a small task lamp on the desk and the overhead in the tiny bathroom. Water gushed from the tap, freezing cold, as Felicity Smoak tried to work the soap bar into a lather. The mud on her hands had dried solid.

Felicity avoided the mirror, knowing what she would see. Eyes red and swollen from weeping. Face puffy and wan in the glare of the fluorescent bulb, lacking the usual glow of expertly applied cosmetics. And happiness.

Ignoring the luxurious Egyptian cotton bath sets Oliver had jokingly brought in when Roy had complained about chafing, she dried her hands on rough paper towels expressly brought with her from home. Then, taking a deep breath, Felicity grasped the edge of the patch pocket on the shirt she was wearing. The pocket over her heart.

"_Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha'olam __dayan__ ha'emet_"

As she recited the ancient words, Felicity tore the pocket downward, the small act of destruction releasing some of the pressure of her grief and rage. The old rabbis knew what they were doing.

Felicity left the light on in the bathroom, but closed the door partway. The foundry was heavy with shadows. She crossed to the packing crate she had moved next to her desk. Sitting down on the hard wooden box, she picked up her copy of The Tanakh, opened it to Lamentations and began to read.

It was 7 am on December 26, 2014. The sixteenth day since Oliver had disappeared.

###

Team Arrow held onto hope through the long days after Oliver left to face Ra's al Ghul. Oliver had deliberately given them no clue as to where the League's "neutral territory" was, how long he would have to travel to get there. He had barely been out the door before Felicity was hacking for all she was worth, scouring the cyber universe for every mention of the League's history and traditions, anything that might provide a clue to the dueling ground that Oliver was headed for.

The problem with ancient, paranoid secret societies of assassins is that their web presence is pretty low.

Digg and Lyla worked every intelligence contact they had. Roy worked the streets to try and track the movements of Nyssa and her guys for clues. They all watched every vague hit of anyone who barely resembled Oliver or Nyssa from every facial recognition program that Felicity could access. And once Amanda Waller gave the nod, Felicity could access quite a few.

Every lead was a dead end. No tall, chisel-jawed man on face rec was ever Oliver.

Then Malcolm Merlyn showed up to announce that Oliver had lost the fight with Ra's. That Oliver Queen was dead.

Team Arrow redoubled their efforts, because you don't take a man like Malcolm Merlyn at his word. They brought Laurel in, telling her only half the story, that Oliver had gone to face Ra's to protect Starling City from the League's wrath. After Laurel had an entirely justified freak-out, she used her shared history with Oliver to track down anyone he might go to if he found himself wounded, stranded, incapacitated. Laurel worked every legal avenue open to the district attorney's office to try and find Oliver, leaving Felicity free to hack even deeper into the Dark Net.

And it all came to nothing.

Led by Digg and Lyla, the soldiers who knew that you must carry on, Team Arrow kept the holidays. Felicity lit her menorah, recited the prayers and showed Roy the intricacies of dreidel. She broke out her bubbe's recipe for rugelach and dropped off a batch at Capt. Lance's precinct. She helped decorate the Diggle/Michaels Christmas tree, adding to the pile of baby's first Christmas ornaments with a crystal snowflake, which looked, if you closed one eye and squinted very hard, ever so slightly like an arrowhead. She drank eggnog at the Palmer Tech holiday party and pressed a chaste kiss on Ray's cheek when they were caught under the mistletoe.

Team Arrow exchanged their gifts on Christmas Eve and then Felicity and Roy camped out on the living room floor of Lyla's house, hands clasped for comfort, looking up at the tree lights through the branches. They were awakened way too early by the arrival of Lyla's parents and sisters, all anxious to celebrate with the littlest family member. While Roy manned the multiple digital cameras and video recorders, Felicity made herself useful with breakfast preparations, with matching opened gifts to cards and tags, with cleaning up wrapping paper, bows and ribbon. And watching as her dearest friends all tried to pretend their hearts weren't breaking over the person who was missing.

She was about to start on the potatoes for the dinner feast when Lyla's mother came and took the peeler out her hands.

"Time for you to take a break, honey. You look all in."

Mrs. Michaels, by the force of a glare that was clearly an inherited trait, moved her two sons-in-law off of the couch, signaled her middle daughter to bring over that fresh cup of cocoa, plucked the baby out of Grampa's lap and settled her in Felicity's arms.

"Nothing like holding a bit of the future to beat the holiday blues." Mrs. Michaels leaned in to press her cheek against Felicity's and whispered in her ear. "I don't know what has all of you so down, but I'm grateful for the effort you're making."

Felicity swallowed against the lump in her throat, rested the slumbering Sara against her shoulder and breathed in the perfect smell of happy, healthy baby.

When Roy left just after dinner to check in on Thea, Felicity made her excuses as well. She got through all the farewells from the Michaels clan and Lyla's parting hug. She even got through being gathered in John's massive embrace, those strong arms so gentle, and hearing his deep voice rumble, "You've always got a family, Felicity. Along as I'm alive there will be a place where you are welcome and loved."

Felicity made it to the car and headed off towards the foundry.

She chose a random playlist on Spotify when she fired up her computers and got back to work. It was hearing Sam Smith's version of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas that broke her down. She and Oliver had energetically debated which version of the mutual favorite Christmas song was best, Felicity arguing for classic Judy Garland and Oliver for Sam. She put her head down on the desk and cried herself to an exhausted sleep.

Just after midnight, Felicity was startled awake by a faint scraping noise and a bit of a draft. As the door to the foundry swung closed, she saw a swirl of black and red before it disappeared. And on the desk, next to where her head had lain, was a battered canvas bag, the one Oliver had carried with him when he left. The one she had teased him once, and only once, about it being his man-purse.

The note on top of it contained only one word.

**Desist**.

Felicity looked for the good in everyone. She knew that was probably the quality that attracted Oliver the most. Nyssa al Ghul knew what it was to love and lose and mourn. So Felicity could not believe the Nyssa would have brought the bag and written the note unless all hope was gone. For once in his evil life Malcolm Merlyn had not lied.

Oliver Queen was dead.

In a daze Felicity crossed to the glass case and took the green leather jacket off the mannequin. She held it briefly to her nose, inhaling deeply, seeking Oliver's scent. But this was the new jacket that Cisco had made. Only the hood held the faint, elusive trace that she was seeking.

Later, Felicity tried to explain her actions, what had led her to take the manicure scissors she kept in her desk drawer and cut through the stitching connecting the hood to the jacket. To take the hood home and wrap it lovingly in the scraps of the dress she had worn on her one and only date with Oliver. To wrap that in turn in layers of wool and waterproof canvas and to place the whole bundle in Oliver's beige satchel.

The only answer she was ever able to come up with was tradition.

It was still full dark when she reached the edge of the Queen estate. Since it was only hours past Christmas, Felicity wasn't too worried about the lackadaisical security patrols the property receivers had set up to guard against intruders. If she tripped an alarm, she really didn't much give a damn.

She approached the spot that Oliver had once pointed out as the easiest place to get over the wall and began to climb.

Felicity hadn't spent much time at the Queen estate, but the place she was looking for was easy to find even with just the flashlight she kept in the glove compartment. She spent a moment contemplating. There was the large marker for Robert Queen, a smaller, hastily erected one for Moira. And a scar in the earth where another marker had once stood. Felicity dropped to her knees in the frostbitten grass, took the trowel she used for her window boxes out of Oliver's satchel and began to dig.

###

A thin winter dawn had begun to break over Starling City, but Felicity Smoak could not see it. She sat in the gloom of the foundry, facing away from the dark screens of her computers, away from the salmon ladder and sparring mats. She sat on hard wood and read the words of mourners.

It was her first day of sitting shiva for Oliver Queen.


End file.
